It’s funny to think that it’s been a full decade since I published my book Knowing Fear, my study of the development of the horror genre. (The book was released a few months ahead of its official 2008 publication date.) Time goes by fast, but it’s more amazing to think that I used to be so deeply enmeshed in the horror genre that I once wrote a whole book about it. Maybe it was the weight of the explosion of media over the past decade, or my waning enthusiasm about devoting my decreasing free time to intentionally seeking out horror, but I’ve found it harder and harder to keep up, or to care.

​That doesn’t mean I haven’t tried, but I haven’t really enjoyed it like I used to. This season of American Horror Story confounds me. Most critics are practically orgasmic over the show’s choice to frame its story explicitly as a Tale of the Trump Era, in which characters openly reenact the most tedious arguments of the days after November 8, 2016. Billed as both horror and satire, Ryan Murphy’s brainchild is closer to the third season of Scream Queens in my view, a misbegotten mishmash of tones that fails on an even more basic level: Horror works when its relevance to our lives exists as subtext beneath the level of the story. Murphy took the subtext to the level of text, and by making it not just a story that speaks to the Trump Era but which is explicitly about the Trump Era, it paradoxically takes me out of the story by calling attention to the fact that it is a fictional narrative. It violates the suspension of disbelief because its broad performances and cartoonish story are so clearly not part of the real Trump’s America, where violence against minorities and angry white mobs aren’t a secret, or a cult, but an everyday part of the banality of evil.

I was similarly unimpressed by Syfy’s second season of Channel Zero: No-End House, based on a short online story from which it borrows only the vaguest of plot points. In expanding the short story to miniseries length, Syfy diluted whatever power the story had (and, in my view, its predictable “shock” ending wasn’t all that powerful) and turned it into a strange meditation on architecture. The design of the No-End House itself—an evil McMansion set up as a Halloween haunted house attraction—was clearly assembled from off the rack spare parts, and the Canadian street where it squats is made up of late twentieth century single family homes of style-free blandness. Taken together, the uninspiring visual design and too-sharp digital video, almost certainly dictated by the show’s small budget, combine to turn the show’s production design against the story, making all of the houses equally ugly and scary and suggesting, against the story’s apparent wishes, that the bland, soulless conformity of suburbia is the true evil. Every house is a No-End House, but I’m not sure that show creator Nick Antonsca recognizes this. We can hope; but the lack of subtext in the first season suggests otherwise, as do interviews when Antonsca speaks of the show in terms of marketing schemes, fan engagement, and other metrics. Naturally, online critics love this series irrationally, and I can’t quite figure out why.

Another widely beloved horror show, MTV’s Teen Wolf, came to an end on Sunday, and it gives me a rare opportunity to evaluate whether my critical opinion turned out to be correct. Many horror series began before I started writing this blog, and many have not yet ended—or both (cough, ahem, Supernatural)—and I so rarely get to see whether a multi-season show lives up, or down, to my initial evaluation of it. Teen Wolf is one of the few to have lasted a number of years and to have started and ended within the years I’ve written this blog.

The show debuted in 2011, and at the time I reviewed the program after its first three episodes. I was rather harsh about what I saw as a stylish but vapid hybrid of Twilight and Buffy. It was one of many TV supernatural adventure / romance stories in the Twilight mold, including The Vampire Diaries, True Blood, etc. Over the course of six seasons, the show grew into something that occasionally approached greatness (in teen TV horror terms) but never reached it. The loss of series regular Dylan O’Brien to the movies halfway through the show’s run, and the subsequent removal of his Stiles character, dealt it a death blow that no number of overly complex and nonsensical plotlines could overcome, especially since series star Tyler Posey is, to be kind, an inert presence whose lack of range and even a suggestion of internal life for his character, titular teen wolf Scott McCall, left the show unmoored and decentered as its final seasons spun out of control. I initially praised his early performance as authentically awkward and boyish, but he was the rare actor who grew smaller and stiffer over the course of a series. With no strong center to draw the story together, what remained was a series of spare parts that were individually interesting, beautifully shot, and often compelling, but never coherent.

But the bigger problem is that Teen Wolf’s plot confusion reflects the fact that the series was trapped into telling a story that series creator Jeff Davis didn’t really want to tell. The pilot of Teen Wolf set up a very conventional Twilight-style story with a bunch of straight boys in love with cardboard cutouts resembling women. I complained in 2011 that the show had trouble writing female characters, and as I commented in 2013 and I will do again today, the women on the show were almost entirely irrelevant and could easily be cut out without impact, and down to the last they existed entirely as fig leaves disguising the real story Teen Wolf wanted to tell. In the first episodes, probably due to network demands, lycanthropy was made into a symbol for steroid abuse, but that fell by the wayside as Davis made plain that his real goal was to make werewolves into symbols of gayness—both superpower and source of ostracism. Gradually, the show got really gay. By the end, about two-thirds of the show’s characters were gay, and the final storyline was literally about whether society would accept the werewolf lifestyle once they were involuntarily forced out of the closet by angry conservatives who feared they would corrupt the youth and convert people to wolfish perversion.

Even the promotional art visually minimized the women.

​The trouble is that this story would have been transgressive, or at least relevant, in 2011, before gay marriage was legal and in a time when half of all Americans still thought of gay people as an evil species. (The likely next senator from Alabama, Roy Moore, still holds such views, and the Trump Justice Department has filed briefs opposing gay rights, so it is not a closed issue by any means.) In 2017, the more noticeable problem is that Davis, who is gay himself, lacked the courage of his convictions and made compromises to get the show made in the first place. There was a great show buried underneath the sops to convention. Had Davis made the main characters gay, this might have been a great and important horror series rather than merely an entertainingly decent show that flirted with relevance. I mentioned that the women on the show were largely afterthoughts, and that is almost certainly because the subtext, if promoted to text, would have dropped those stand-in characters altogether, and been a better show for it. In the final episode, when Scott is reunited with his best friend Stiles but is somehow saved from death by a kiss from his underdeveloped very brief late-series love interest, with whom, despite great effort to force the matter, Tyler Posey had no chemistry, the whole drama of the moment collapsed because it failed to hit an emotional note. Compared to the series’ best episode, season 3’s “Motel California,” when Stiles saves Scott from a magically induced suicide attempt by calling him his brother, this scene, set up to be mirror of it, fell flat.

And no, I did not recall all those details off the top of my head. I did have to look it up. This isn’t Buffy after all.

Four years ago, I said that Teen Wolf was really about masculinity, and I amend that here. In the end, it became a show about the many different ways to live as a gay man, and the emotional residue created by having to operate in a world not meant for you. The monsters the characters fought were consistently trying to enact punishments deeply affecting to gay men—physically assaulting them, trying to “fix” them, making them disappear, or eliminating them from the gene pool altogether. (There was also a weird, misbegotten Japanese season, but whatever.) I could go on, but I think I’ve probably put more thought into this than Davis did, seeing as he claims to see the show as basically Buffy and Twilight with a more artistic production design. He also created Criminal Minds, so subtlety isn’t his strong suit.

In the end, it turned out that my first impression was correct: “The bigger problem, however, is that the Twilight-inspired atmospherics—all shadows and clouds of dry ice fog and muted color palettes—fail to match the content of the show. Teen Wolf is simply too earnest and too gentle for that. Despite the occasional flashes of (I presume network-mandated) gore and one crude reference to oral sex, Teen Wolf is a program that is warm and fuzzy instead of sharp with teeth and claws—more puppy-dog than wolf.” In the end, everyone got a happy ending, and I suppose that is good enough for a show that was always more style than substance.

I stopped watching American Horror Story after its second season. It just wasn't gay enough...

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Bored of Decency

9/27/2017 01:43:45 pm

I stopped watching it after 9/11.

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Joe Scales

9/27/2017 04:08:07 pm

Touché. Now try to be a good sport too pops.

Kal

9/27/2017 02:12:04 pm

A Trump era horror show would be incredibly dated and not sell well in some years from now. They shouldn't do that on TV, but they do stuff like that. Not only that, the horror show is evident everyday. It would be ironically unrealistic in the end.

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KAL

9/28/2017 03:12:51 am

I am a card carrying fascist islamist. Just saying that I hate America and I want isreal destroyed.

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Kal

9/28/2017 05:35:00 pm

Not me. Someone is a copycat.

David Wilcock

9/28/2017 03:14:47 am

Jason I am going to sue you for bringing my family into your sick world. We all know Jason that you are a registered sex offender (those poor little boys)
But I may be a sick pyscho that beats my kids but you are sicker. Slander suit approaches

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David Bradbury

9/28/2017 03:44:40 am

If you're referring to statements Jason has made on his blog/website or on Twitter, that would be libel rather than slander. Your (or David's if you're not the real David) multiple publications and media appearances put you into the "public figure" category, so you'll need to meet the "actual malice" test.

This does not appear to be the real David Wilcock, and it wouldn't make sense anyway, since I've never mentioned his family, except in summarizing Wilcock's own words from his book, a year ago. I think the faker confused my references to Corey Goode's recent allegations with Wilcock.

Just might be from what's been happening lately. Pay attention:
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/10/white-nationalists-terrorize-houston-book-fair-in-largest-show-of-force-since-charlottesville

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Joe Scales

10/1/2017 06:17:56 pm

This being rather a touchy subject, let me boil it down to a quick choice for you Jamie. Would you have rather found yourself at that Houston book fair or perhaps in Baltimore the night the fires raged? Or defending your hair salon in Ferguson during that ruckus?

The question asked was "where do you get this stuff" as if it doesn't happen. I'd prefer we address the causes of the events you mentioned than try to dismiss them are non-issues as "Army vet" inferred.

Joe Scales

10/2/2017 10:06:57 am

We are painting people with broad brushes Jamie, and all for political posturing. Fanning flames, setting us against each other and those manipulated believing the righteousness of their cause outweighs the reality of the unfortunate consequences that necessarily follow. Deep down, we love to hate. There's nothing more to figure out here. It's endemic to all.

The only thing I really hate is intollerance. We ignore the surge of white nationalism that is recently growing at our peril.

Joe Scales

10/2/2017 01:44:41 pm

Intolerance is a two way street. Now I'm not gonna defend the ideals for white nationalists, but our Constitution gives them the right to free speech. If they are exercising that right lawfully and are physically confronted, who is being intolerant? And I don't mean intolerant of their views, but rather intolerant of their rights. So that leaves you with banning what they are trying to express and to do so, you'd have to amend our Constitution. I see folks heading down this road, and what they fail to realize is that by banning "hate speech", they leave themselves open to such future curtailment by the whims of the political powers that be.

So would you trade the rights of your heirs to silence what in all actuality is an extreme minority of despicable people who are given disproportional publicity simply to smear a political opponent. These are the questions you need to ask yourself when having your passions manipulated by those who truly don't serve you.

I'm unable to find anything in the 1st Amendment that gives them the right to be violent or run down people in their car. I wrote nothing about curtailing their speech, only that they are a clear and present danger to this nation. If we don't keep an eye on them more people will end up dead. Which would you rather deal with, a mob of angry white guys full of racist hate, or a group of Black Lives Matter protesters begging for lives to be saved? Let them rant and rave, but keep an eye on the hate groups. The US was doing that until Trump shut that down.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-extremists-program-exclusiv/exclusive-trump-to-focus-counter-extremism-program-solely-on-islam-sources-idUSKBN15G5VO

Joe Scales

10/3/2017 10:12:26 am

"I wrote nothing about curtailing their speech, only that they are a clear and present danger to this nation."

And why do you suppose those legal terms of art are being used? You might want to study Constitutional law before you throw them around so casually and understand its impact. But if one act of violence necessitates shutting down free speech, where do you stand on ANTIFA? And these are your standards, mind you. Goose, meet gander.

Jamie, you're engaging in reactionary politics; which was a concept usually reserved for those on the right.

Because I chose to use those terms. I didn't get them from somewhere else as you appear to insinuate. Anyone who doesn't understand how much of a problem right wing extremists (usually white) are and will continue to be needs to have their head examined. I've been around these sorts of people here in the South and they are not something we should simply ignore. I don't get why you don't see them as a threat. They've attacked more people this year in the US than Islamic extremists have.

As I recalled it was Oliver Wendell Holmes who first used the phrase in regard to the 1st Amendment. His words still ring true today.
"The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that the United States Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree. When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right."

Believe it or not right wing extremists are at war with this nation. They do not believe in the principles of the Constitution, a document I swore an oath to support and defend. They can have their parades and slogans but when they plot violent action as chat logs proved they did before Charlottesville and as they did in Houston it's a problem that needs addressing by law enforcement.

As for antifa (anti-FACISTS) I do not support them when they turn violent, but I know of no one who has been killed by them, unlike what the extreme right does. I know a few people who have participated with them, but not conducted black bloc activities.

Joe Scales

10/3/2017 04:14:20 pm

The rules of the Internet dictate that three unanswered posts in a row = batshit crazy. But not meaning to end on an ad hominem, I would only inform you that when you throw around "clear and present danger", they are legal terms of art for conditions necessitating the suspension of Constitutional rights. Despite partisans throwing the term recklessly about in order to smear political opponents by association fallacies, I truly don't believe you've met your burden of proof to justify it within your arguments. Think hard about that Jamie, as I mean this in earnest; and you have been a good sport about this. The laws are already in the books to prosecute violent acts. We don't need to sensationalize recent political events in order to dismantle the First Amendment. And yes, that is where you are heading with this talk whether you realize it or not.

So you thought you'd lead with an ad hom instead of end with one - how sweet of you. I've been online since 1995 and cut my teeth on the usenet newsgroups, but have yet to run across your 'rules of the internet'. Had Weebly allowed edits of posts it might have been just two, but I noticed I hadn't addressed your antifa question. Quit yer bitching, you got three. BFD. I suspect you'll live.

No one is talking about changing the 1st Amendment, least of all me. The point I've made repeatedly is that to ignore these very violent far right groups is to invite a lot of trouble, but our current POTUS wants to do just that because they are part of his base. He can bitch about the lack of gratitude from a mayor up to her elbows in water trying to help her people but he can't bring himself to condemn those who actually call for genocide. I suppose their violent plans is beyond your capability to grasp.

I am talking about better monitoring and not ignoring these groups. I do not understand why you fail comprehend that. Was my post about Trump ignoring domestic terrorism threats too blunt for you?

Joe Scales

10/4/2017 10:43:50 am

" I've been online since 1995..."

And boy must your arm must be tired...

You're too enveloped in political rhetoric to reach at this point, so peace be with you... just try to remember that legal terms of art are not play things.

And you are being deliberately obtuse. At no point did I champion altering or restricting 1st Amendment rights, and this all started with someone who was apparently incredulous over the phrase "angry white mobs" as if they don't exist.

Joe Scales

10/4/2017 02:15:17 pm

Jesus Christ... Calling someone's actions a "clear and present danger" is a foundation for denying them First Amendment rights. That you can't comprehend this is your deficiency, not mine. Damn, know what you're talking about before you enter the fray, rather than parroting political rhetoric of which you have no true understanding.

I understand well enough. It is YOU who keep trying to read into it something that isn't there. Neither one of us are legal entities or government office holders.

Joe Scales

10/5/2017 10:47:17 am

Yes, I know. Above you claimed "clear and present danger" was your own choice in words. You invented it, right? Came up with it all on your own, right?

No. You're parroting political rhetoric of which you have absolutely no understanding. If you wish for me to keep rubbing your nose in it, I'll kindly oblige. Or you could choose to learn from this and move on. Your choice.

Who am I parroting? You do understand that we aren't discussing government restrictions, right? I see no attempt by the government to restrict the speech of these angry white mobs. Quite the opposite. But apparently you see absolutely no danger in them, if you even acknowledge they exist. Can you admit that there really are mobs of angry white men in the US, or will you continue to harp on the use of legal language by unofficial forum posters? That's how this sub thread started off, after all.

Joe Scales

10/5/2017 03:27:49 pm

Choice A it is then. Fine Jamie, I'll walk you through it.

Above, it was I that first brought up Constitutional rights; specifically First Amendment. In your response you then told me white nationalists were a "clear and present danger". Forgive me for thinking that you were knowledgeable enough to understand that when a group's behavior amounts to a "clear and present danger", First Amendment rights can be suspended (Freedom of Speech, Assembly, etc.). So after using this legal term of art, in the first of your 3 in a row responses, you claim you chose the phrase "clear and present danger" and didn't get it from anywhere else. Then in your second of the 3 in a row responses you seemed to recall Oliver Wendell Holmes using the phrase in question in relation to First Amendment Rights, and so beautifully quoted him.

So which is it then... did you get the phrase "clear and present danger" on your own, or did Oliver tip you off? My guess is you googled it after I pointed it out to you and you quoted from his Supreme Court opinion without fully understanding what you were cutting and pasting. But that's a good thing Jamie. It shows you're willing to learn, even if not capable of understanding. But is it any coincidence that in the last few weeks, perhaps beginning with Hilary Clinton's book tour, that the phrase "clear and present danger" began to be thrown about by politicians in their daily talking points. Are you sure that's not where you got the phrase? Either way, throwing those words around, whether you understand them or not, fulfils the wishes of the political forces who gave them to you.

Now on to these white nationalists that you believe to be a clear and present danger, but not in a Constitutional sense of course. Above you posted an article from Reuters and exclaimed: "Let them rant and rave, but keep an eye on the hate groups. The US was doing that until Trump shut that down." Well first of all, Trump didn't "shut that down". Though "sources" claimed Trump was going to rename Obama's Countering Violent Extremism Task Force and focus it solely on Islam, that never happened. It's still there: https://www.dhs.gov/cve Furthermore, even if it is renamed and repurposed, the U.S. government would still be keeping an eye on domestic violent hate groups through other counter-terrorism programs. But hey, don't take it from me... take it from Snopes (http://www.snopes.com/trump-terror-watch-program/).

So Jamie, you're basically a tool for politicians; parroting their political rhetoric with absolutely no understanding of what you say. You push political smears based upon news stories you don't read or research yourself, but instead rely upon political agitators to manipulate you accordingly with false and/or incomplete, biased summation.

I know your first instinct now is to dig your heels in, but just let it go Jamie. Maybe you'll do better next time.

My concerns over white supremacists is a "political smear"? You latched onto a phrase I used as if it's the main focus of my point. It was not. My point, which went right over your head, was that there really are angry white mobs out there. And yes, Trump has pulled funding for 12 grant recipients who were studying violent extremism.
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/346552-trump-cut-funds-to-fight-anti-right-wing-violence

But do please continue to indulge in your passion for teaching, especially if you could engage in the finer points of "the rules of the internet". I'd love to learn who codified those rules.

Joe Scales

10/5/2017 09:56:37 pm

Okay Jamie. As Constitutional law isn't your bag... as well as rational discourse and reading comprehension... let's try comedy. Here's how you should have responded to Army Vet:

How little did I know that my use of that phrase would trigger you so badly. I can't imagine how you must have felt when the movie came out, let alone the Clancy novel (which is probably where I remembered it from). If I could edit I'd go back and change it to "a real and obvious danger". Bygones.

I have a difficult time finding humor in racism and nationalism. Especially when it turns deadly. CNN wouldn't have crossed my mind because I don't watch mainstream media outlets, except the BBC on rare occasions.

If this were a blog about law you might have a point, but it's not. I suspect you'll live. My original point still stands. There really are mobs of angry white men out there, and to ignore them is folly. Ever been to a militia meeting? I have. Those are some very angry men (with a small number of ladies thrown in).

Joe Scales

10/6/2017 10:10:52 am

"How little did I know that my use of that phrase would trigger you so badly."

You answered the 3rd. Besides, that's just me being an internet rule breaker.

Kal

9/28/2017 05:32:04 pm

"KAL
9/28/2017 03:12:51 am
I am a card carrying fascist islamist. Just saying that I hate America and I want isreal destroyed."

I did not post this. Please refrain from being a yutz, copycat. At least capitalize Israel.

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Residents Fan

9/29/2017 05:19:52 am

"it’s more amazing to think that I used to be so deeply enmeshed in the horror genre that I once wrote a whole book about it...That doesn’t mean I haven’t tried, but I haven’t really enjoyed it like I used to."

Hey, the best horror fiction is where is always was-in books! Have you not acquainted yourself with such excellent writers as Grady Hendrix, Stephen Volk (whose "The Parts We Play" was the best horror collection I've read in years) or Helen Marshall?

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Seed of Bismuth

10/2/2017 10:15:41 am

The only way Trump era could work for me in horror is if it's a comedy sting. where like the Serial Killer is ritually murdering people then near the end of the film they see the election night victory and go "guess I can retire, killing people just doesn't make sense anymore" [cut to credits]